Liu, who is also the sub-editor and columnist of the Metro Vancouver edition of Sing Tao Daily, a Chinese-language daily newspaper, has denied the accusation.

Liu received the nomination earlier this month for his work in organizing an anti-racism rally in Richmond in 2016 and speaking in front of 4,000 people at a major anti-racist demonstration in Vancouver.

However, in an open letter sent to the minister of B.C. Tourism, Arts and Culture last week, North Vancouver resident Samson Kong said Liu’s editorial pieces on a number of Hong Kong religious websites in Chinese (not the Sing Tao) shows his “discriminative views” regarding sexual minorities.

“…it will be highly inappropriate and really unfortunate if the nominee Edward Liu is made a recipient of the BC Multiculturalism and Anti-Racism Award,” Kong wrote in the letter.

Kong pointed to a 2013 article Liu published on the Christian Times website, which warned that the Hong Kong government should be “very cautious” on the then hotly debated sexual orientation discrimination legislation.

“(Some) are worried that there will be serious ‘reverse discrimination’ after the legislation, which will erode other core values of Hong Kong, including freedom of speech and freedom of religion, and will bring the brainwashing education of homosexuality to the school,” wrote Liu in translated Chinese.

“Such worries are actually not unfounded. It is a process I have witnessed in Canada over the past two decades.”

Liu also stated that, after same-sex marriage was recognized in Canada, “the traditional definition of marriage between a man and a woman has disintegrated, the gender boundary has been dismantled and the (partner) number limit of traditional marriage has begun to be challenged.”

In another article Liu wrote in 2012 forThe Gospel Heraldin Chinese, he said the Bill C-279 introduced to Ottawa, to add gender identity to the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Canadian Criminal Code, “protects the human rights of people with psychological gender changes on the surface, but in fact opens the door to sexual harassment of women” and “causes distress to the public.”

“If Bill C-279 is passed, a man only needs to claim he is a woman at the moment, then theoretically he is protected by the human rights law, and can freely get access to female washrooms and changing rooms,” wrote Liu.

Liu: I’m not against anyone

Liu doesn’t deny his earlier writings, but he does deny they are discriminatory towards LGBTQ2+ people. Rather, he claims he was just trying to talk about possible problems in society if such a policy was implemented in Hong Kong.

“My focus was always about policy and what is good for the community…not just a so-called standpoint,” said Liu.

Liu added that he was contacted by the editor of the religious publications in question to write something about the sexual orientation discrimination legislation debate in Hong Kong at the time.

“Someone said that’s absolutely good, that’s why the editor said (to me), ‘is there any potential consequences to those policies if we don’t write it carefully?’” said Liu.

“I’m not against anyone. If you read the article, you will see it’s just about the policy and what could be the potential problems.

“And the conclusion is, we should open up the forum to let people have more discussions, instead of saying this is the only view on the issue.”

Award committee: It is extremely disappointing

The Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture responded to the Richmond News regarding the letter on Monday.

“It is extremely disappointing that a nominee may have made statements or written articles that run contrary to the principles of an inclusive society,” said the ministry in a statement.

“Inclusion and respect for all British Columbians, including members of B.C.’s LGBTQ2+ communities, is a fundamental principle of this government.”

New results from an NPR survey show that large numbers of Asian-Americans experience and perceive discrimination in many areas of their daily lives. This happens despite their having average incomes that outpace other racial, ethnic and identity groups.

The poll, a collaboration among NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, also finds a wide gap between immigrant and non-immigrant Asian-Americans in reporting discrimination experiences, including violence and harassment.

“Our poll shows that Asian-American families have the highest average income among the groups we’ve surveyed, and yet the poll still finds that Asian-Americans experience persistent discrimination in housing, jobs and at college,” says Robert Blendon, professor of health policy and political analysis at the Harvard Chan School who co-directed the survey. “Over the course of our series, we are seeing again and again that income is not a shield from discrimination.”

In addition to asking about personal experiences with discrimination, we also wanted to find out what people’s perceptions are of discrimination within their own neighborhoods. The numbers for Asian-Americans were lower on this measure than for personal experiences but still show that a notable level of discrimination exists in everyday life.

The survey was conducted among a nationally representative probability-based telephone (cell and landline) sample of 500 Asian-American adults. The margin of error for the total Asian-American response is 5.8 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence interval. Interviews were conducted in English, Mandarin, Cantonese and Vietnamese. Complete methodological information is in the full poll report.

Looking at the split according to immigration status, we found that nonimmigrant Asian-Americans are more than three times as likely to say they’ve experienced violence because they are Asian and more than twice as likely to say they’ve been threatened or non-sexually harassed because they are Asian.

We also saw a similar gap based on immigration status in terms of experiencing sexual harassment. But it’s important to note that our poll was done earlier this year, before the country’s widespread discussions of sexual assault and harassment in the fall. “These national conversations may have affected how people viewed or responded to their own experiences, or on their willingness to disclose these experiences in a survey,” Blendon says.

More than half of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Americans say they have experienced violence, threats or harassment because of their sexuality or gender identity, according to new poll results being released Tuesday by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

“There are very few nationally representative polls of LGBTQ people, and even fewer that ask about LGBTQ people’s personal experiences of discrimination,” says Logan Casey, deputy director of the survey and research associate in public opinion at the Harvard Chan School. “This report confirms the extraordinarily high levels of violence and harassment in LGBTQ people’s lives.”

Majorities also say they have personally experienced slurs or insensitive or offensive comments or negative assumptions about their sexual orientation. And 34 percent say they or an LGBTQ friend or family member has been verbally harassed in the bathroom when entering or while using a bathroom — or has been told or asked if they were using the wrong bathroom.

The poll, conducted earlier this year, looked not only at violence and harassment but also at a wide range of discrimination experiences. We asked about discrimination in employment, education, in their interactions with police and the courts and in their everyday lives in their own neighborhoods. We’re breaking out the results by race, ethnicity and identity. You can find what we’ve released so far on our series page “You, Me and Them: Experiencing Discrimination in America.”

Seventy-one years ago Mavis Chu Lew Garland and eight of her preschool classmates were photographed on the porch of the Chinese Canadian Institute on the corner of Dundas St. W. and University Ave.

Times were different, rather “extremely difficult,” she says, being born to a Chinese immigrant father and a white mother when interracial marriages were seen as unacceptable.

But now, at the age of 76, Garland and her classmates have come together to recreate a photo that was taken during a period of discrimination, and now represents a snapshot of Canadian immigrant history.

The photo, which Garland found while scrounging through old shoeboxes is just one of the artifacts donated to the Toronto Public Library as part of a three-year initiative, the Chinese Canadian archives, which opened on Tuesday at the Toronto Reference Library.

Since the announcement calling for donations in July, the library has received hundreds of articles to commemorate the historic voices of the Chinese people in Canada. Among the collection are old photographs of the city’s first Chinese restaurants, and businesses that once existed in the area where City Hall stands today.

But among the pieces of colourful memorabilia are documents highlighting a Canadian history of discrimination, including documentation on the racist Chinese head tax, showing how it rose from $50 in 1885 to $100 in 1900 and eventually to $500 in 1903 — at the time the price of buying two houses in Toronto.

Seventy-one years ago Mavis Chu Lew Garland and eight of her preschool classmates were photographed on the porch of the Chinese Canadian Institute on the corner of Dundas St. W. and University Ave.

Times were different, rather “extremely difficult,” she says, being born to a Chinese immigrant father and a white mother when interracial marriages were seen as unacceptable.

But now, at the age of 76, Garland and her classmates have come together to recreate a photo that was taken during a period of discrimination, and now represents a snapshot of Canadian immigrant history.

The photo, which Garland found while scrounging through old shoeboxes is just one of the artifacts donated to the Toronto Public Library as part of a three-year initiative, the Chinese Canadian archives, which opened on Tuesday at the Toronto Reference Library.

Since the announcement calling for donations in July, the library has received hundreds of articles to commemorate the historic voices of the Chinese people in Canada. Among the collection are old photographs of the city’s first Chinese restaurants, and businesses that once existed in the area where City Hall stands today.

But among the pieces of colourful memorabilia are documents highlighting a Canadian history of discrimination, including documentation on the racist Chinese head tax, showing how it rose from $50 in 1885 to $100 in 1900 and eventually to $500 in 1903 — at the time the price of buying two houses in Toronto.

Then there was the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1881, when an estimated 17,000 Chinese workers were brought to Canada and endured long working days, for around $1 a day. Due to the poor working conditions and illnesses, records estimated that they died in the thousands.

“All of them remained nameless in the history of Canada,” the monument standing just outside the Rogers Centre commemorating the Chinese CPR workers reads.

“I feel like a lot of the lives, work, and contributions of Chinese-Canadians have remained nameless,” 28-year-old Coly Chau told the Star.

Chau immigrated to Montreal from Hong Kong at the age of 5.

“Elementary and secondary education gave me very little exposure to the history of Chinese Canadians” Chau says.

After graduating high school, Chau said a lack of belonging pushed her to “dig deeper” to research and learn about her history.

“As an immigrant, my experiences have been greatly attributed to the contributions and experiences of those Chinese Canadians that came before my family and I,” Chau said. “There are instances of racism that I’ve experienced, or the feeling of being an outsider — but those that came before me worked very hard to dismantle a lot of it, and lessen it for us now.”

Under-reported, given the potential impact on the large number of Canadians (according to the 2011 NHS, about 170,000 Iranian Canadians, 50,000 Iraqi Canadians, 41,000 Syrian Canadians and 17,000 Sudanese Canadians):

TODAY BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS approved a $1.1 trillion spending bill intended to keep government services funded through September 2016. Tucked into this omnibus legislation are provisions that could undermine, on the basis of personal heritage, the ability of many American citizens to travel visa-free to countries in Europe and east Asia.

For more than 25 years, the Visa Waiver Program has allowed people from a select list of countries, currently 38 nations long, to travel to the U.S. without a visa. Those countries, in turn, must reciprocate, allowing Americans the same privilege on their own soil. Today, Congress voted to change the deal: People coming from countries covered under the Visa Waiver Program, including people who are citizens of those countries, will now need to get a visa if they are determined to be nationals of Iran, Iraq, Sudan, and Syria, or if they have visited those countries since 2011.

This is worse than it sounds, because at least two of those countries, Iran and Syria, deem people to be nationals, regardless of where they were born or live, if their fathers are citizens. So it’s possible that someone who is a citizen of one of the countries on the visa-free travel list — the United Kingdom, say — and who lives there and grew up there and has never visited another country, could end up denied entry to the U.S. because of a parent born in Iran or Syria.

It gets even worse still, because there is a strong likelihood that countries party to the newly altered Visa Waiver Program, including European Union member states, will institute reciprocal restrictions on Americans, meaning that many Iranian-Americans, Syrian-Americans, and others in the U.S. would see their ability to travel the world seriously degraded based on ancestry or dual citizenship. Potentially facing similar reciprocal restrictions are any aid workers, journalists, or other Americans who simply visited at some point since 2011 the countries targeted in the new legislation.

An open letter published by the European Union’s ambassador to the United States has already said that passage of the bill “could trigger legally mandated reciprocal measures” against American citizens, in this case, specifically those whose national origin is from Iran, Sudan, Syria, or Iraq, effectively placing them into a lower category of citizenship when attempting to travel abroad.

The new restrictions have alarmed civil rights groups in the United States, including the American Civil Liberties Union, which in a letter to the House of Representatives earlier this month called the changes arbitrary, discriminatory, and “un-American,” since they would punish individuals solely based on their nationality or ethnic origin. Despite this harsh criticism, at least some of the provisions were approved by the House of Representatives in a 407-19 vote on December 8, paving the way for today’s vote.

Jamal Abdi, a spokesperson for the National Iranian American Council, believes the legislation will eventually prompt other countries to deny Iranian-Americans the same rights of free travel enjoyed by other Americans.

“Targeting people who are dual nationals is particularly discriminatory and unjust, since dual nationality is not something you choose,” Abdi said. “Under this legislation, if you’re a European of Iranian origin or your father is an Iranian citizen, you wouldn’t be able to travel without a visa to the United States. As we’ve already heard from the EU, this would trigger reciprocal measures that would result in the passports of Iranian-Americans being treated as inferior, essentially putting them in a category of second-class citizenship.”

The bill approved by the House earlier this month, HR-158, which is related to the legislation approved today, was initially written for the narrow and reasonable purpose of blocking or restricting from U.S. entry individuals who traveled to Islamic State-controlled territory in Syria or Iraq. But provisions later added by Republican lawmakers made the legislation more draconian, including by imposing restrictions involving entire countries — official “state sponsors of terrorism” like Iran and Sudan. (In those two countries, at least, the Islamic State is nonexistent.)

Some parts of the newly passed legislation could even violate the recently negotiated deal between the U.S. and Iran to curb Iranian nuclear activity.

For example, under the new rules, a European or Japanese business owner who traveled to Iran to take advantage of recently lifted economic sanctions would thereafter find themselves denied visa-free entry to the United States — a restriction that would inevitably act as a deterrent to doing business in Iran. But the provisions of the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal prohibit policies that undermine “the normalization of trade and economic relations with Iran.”

Thirty-three Democratic members of Congress signed an open letter published last week criticizing some of the new Visa Waiver Program restrictions. The letter said the restrictions “would result in discrimination against people simply because they are dual citizens based on ancestry” and asserted that national origin should not be a factor when determining visa requirements. People entering the United States, the letter said, should be evaluated on an individual level, not based on “where their parents are from.”

In the end, those objections were not enough to stop the new rules. Abdi said that politicians have stoked fears of immigration and helped increase public support for harsh laws that target en masse individuals from Muslim-majority countries.

“This bill is a direct response to the rhetoric of GOP leaders like Donald Trump and others who have called for restricting people coming to the United States based on national origin,” Abdi said. “There has been a lot of outcry about his outrageous comments and proposals from the public and in the media, but now as a consequence of the environment he’s helped create, we’re actually seeing Congress take steps to turn such xenophobic ideas into law.”

You’re probably at least a little bit racist and sexist and homophobic. Most of us are.

Before you get all indignant, try taking one of the popular implicit-association tests. Created by sociologists at Harvard, the University of Washington, and the University of Virginia, they measure people’s unconscious prejudice by testing how easy — or difficult — it is for the test-takers to associate words like “good” and “bad” with images of black people versus white people, or “scientist” and “lab” with men versus women.

These tests find that — regardless of how many Pride parades they attend or how many “This is what a feminist looks like” T-shirts they own — most people trust men over women, white people over minorities, and straight people over queer people. These trends can hold true regardless of the gender, race or sexuality of the test-taker. I’m from India, and the test found that I’m biased against Asian-Americans.

There is research indicating that these types of implicit prejudices may help explain why cops are more likely to shoot unarmed black men than to shoot unarmed white men, and why employers are more likely to hire white candidates than equally qualified black candidates.

….Perhaps more important than the lasting effects of this particular approach, Paller’s findings are proof that our implicit attitudes are malleable — and maybe, just maybe, it is possible for people to let go of prejudice for good, if they want to. But it won’t be easy.

“Adults have had years and years of exposure to stereotypes,” Paller says. And biases take hold early — studies have found that kids as young as 4 and 5 show racial and gender bias. “It can take a lot of effort to reverse that.”

Paller stresses that this is very preliminary research. To confirm the results, a lot more people have to be tested. “Plus, we still don’t know if changing people’s results on the implicit-bias test translates to them acting differently toward minorities in the real world,” he notes.

The bottom line: There’s no silver bullet, says Anthony Greenwald, a social psychologist at the University of Washington who helped develop the implicit-association test. At least not yet. “But I’m open-minded,” says Greenwald, who wasn’t involved in Paller’s study. “It will be interesting to see if these results can be reproduced.”

Greenwald, who perhaps understands more about bias than just about anyone, has taken the implicit-association test himself. His results haven’t budged over the years. He’s still biased along racial and gender lines, he says, “even though I really don’t like having these biases.”

And while it may be hard to correct such inbuilt bias, it starts with being more mindful of such associations and automatic thinking.

Given that people have biases, not surprising that the algorithms created reflect some of these biases:

Algorithms, which are a series of instructions written by programmers, are often described as a black box; it is hard to know why websites produce certain results. Often, algorithms and online results simply reflect people’s attitudes and behavior. Machine learning algorithms learn and evolve based on what people do online. The autocomplete feature on Google and Bing is an example. A recent Google search for “Are transgender,” for instance, suggested, “Are transgenders going to hell.”

“Even if they are not designed with the intent of discriminating against those groups, if they reproduce social preferences even in a completely rational way, they also reproduce those forms of discrimination,” said David Oppenheimer, who teaches discrimination law at the University of California, Berkeley.

But there are laws that prohibit discrimination against certain groups, despite any biases people might have. Take the example of Google ads for high-paying jobs showing up for men and not women. Targeting ads is legal. Discriminating on the basis of gender is not.

The Carnegie Mellon researchers who did that study built a tool to simulate Google users that started with no search history and then visited employment websites. Later, on a third-party news site, Google showed an ad for a career coaching service advertising “$200k+” executive positions 1,852 times to men and 318 times to women.

The reason for the difference is unclear. It could have been that the advertiser requested that the ads be targeted toward men, or that the algorithm determined that men were more likely to click on the ads.

Google declined to say how the ad showed up, but said in a statement, “Advertisers can choose to target the audience they want to reach, and we have policies that guide the type of interest-based ads that are allowed.”

Anupam Datta, one of the researchers, said, “Given the big gender pay gap we’ve had between males and females, this type of targeting helps to perpetuate it.”

It would be impossible for humans to oversee every decision an algorithm makes. But companies can regularly run simulations to test the results of their algorithms. Mr. Datta suggested that algorithms “be designed from scratch to be aware of values and not discriminate.”

“The question of determining which kinds of biases we don’t want to tolerate is a policy one,” said Deirdre Mulligan, who studies these issues at the University of California, Berkeley School of Information. “It requires a lot of care and thinking about the ways we compose these technical systems.”

Silicon Valley, however, is known for pushing out new products without necessarily considering the societal or ethical implications. “There’s a huge rush to innovate,” Ms. Mulligan said, “a desire to release early and often — and then do cleanup.”

Interesting study. According the National Household Survey data, black teachers form XX percent in Ontario schools:

Many black teachers across Ontario still face racism on the job, according to a new study of educators, half of whom said they believe being black has hurt their chance of promotion. Some told of hearing the ‘N’ word used in the staff room and being mistaken for a trespasser.

“I had a supply teacher tell me I am not allowed to park my car in staff parking,” said one of the 148 black educators across 12 Ontario school boards surveyed for a report to be released Friday. “The ‘N’ word was used in casual conversation in our staff room,” said another. “I was introduced as ‘home girl’ to a student teacher.”

The 63-page report, The Voices of Ontario Black Educators, prepared for the Ontario Alliance of Black School Educators (ONABSE), calls for Ontario to enact tough employment equity legislation, provide training against anti-black bias, set targets for promoting teachers of colour and cluster black teachers in particular in schools where there are high numbers of black students.

“We’re disappointed, but not surprised at the findings — racism is still deeply ingrained in society,” said Warren Salmon, interim president of ONABSE, which commissioned the report because of concerns expressed by its members.

Of the black teachers, principals and vice-principals surveyed, one-third said they believe they have been passed over for advancement because they are black. Some 27 per cent said racial discrimination by colleagues affects their day-to-day work life and 51 per cent said they believe anti-black bias at their school board affects who gets promoted.

Equity consultant Tana Turner of Turner Consultants conducted the survey, and called for school boards to “set equity goals and timetables — not just have an employment equity office which merely measures the numbers of employees …

“If the government wants to close the gap in racial diversity between students and those at the front of the classroom,” she said, “legislation and other government interventions may be needed.”

Typically, a hiring manager posts an opening, describes the ideal candidate and resumes come flooding in. After doing some interviews, the manager has to make a gut decision: Who is the best person for the job?

Research shows that more often than not, managers pick someone whose background is similar to theirs.

But, Vujosevic says, “There is definitely room to improve how we view talent, how we screen talent, how we engage with talent and how we end up interviewing talent.”

By “talent,” he means all the gifted young people he knew that weren’t getting job interviews at technology companies because they didn’t fit a certain idea of what a good job candidate looks like. They didn’t graduate from college, they taught themselves to code or they had a strong accent.

Vujosevic thinks he knows how to get around this problem with a completely different way of looking at hiring. He thought these unconventional applicants could get interviews if there was a way to show what they could do without revealing who they were.

So he created a website called GapJumpers where employers post a job along with some sort of challenge, like: Create a Web page or write a social media strategy. To apply for the job, you just take on the challenge.

“Right now, we are able to do blind auditions for software engineering roles, design roles, marketing roles, communication roles and allow candidates that might on paper not be a good fit, prove that they actually are,” he says.

He compares it to his favorite singing competition, NBC’s The Voice. Four celebrity judges sit in red super villain chairs with their backs turned to the stage. And then, someone sings. The judges hit a button and turn their chairs around. That’s the first time they see who’s performing, but they’ve already decided “I pick you for my team.” It’s a blind audition.

And that’s kind of how GapJumpers works.

Jeremiah Reyes is in charge of hiring at Dolby Laboratories. He wanted to spend less time sorting through applications and getting more qualified candidates, including people with nontraditional backgrounds.

Recently, a Dolby hiring manager was shocked to discover his favorite candidate came from a community college.

“The one that we did select, even in our debrief he basically said, ‘Wow, I think if I just saw his resume on my desk, I don’t know if I would have selected him,’ ” Reyes says. “It was one of those ‘aha’ moments for him that this is a really interesting tool.”

More waves from the 2011 study by Oreopoulos (blind cv test showing how ethnic-sounding names screened out candidates):

It’s a dilemma with no easy solutions for job applicants, Dr. Oreopoulos said. “You could change your name, but your name is a significant part of your identity. I definitely wouldn’t recommend changing your name to get a higher chance of getting a job,” he said.

He suggested one tactic might be for a job seeker to put his or her name in a smaller type size or in a less visible location on the résumé, while playing up language skills and other necessary experience.

Another approach would be to take advantage of the trend toward video résumés, which can make it clear that you have the language and presentation skills to do the job, he added.

As for employers, he suggested that one way to reduce potential bias among hiring managers would be to specifically ask for résumés that mask the applicant’s name, similar to what is done for orchestra rehearsals in which the musicians play for the vetting committee behind a screen.

For example, in a job application the name and contact information could be on a separate sheet at the back of the résumé rather than on the cover page, he suggested.

Ultimately, “I think the onus is much more on employers to be aware of their potential bias and look beyond names, so they take advantage of the quality and experience of the best candidates,” Dr. Oreopoulos said.

“If our theory is correct, it’s in the employers interest. If it is subconscious, then employers are missing out on good candidates.”

And the comments from HR managers confirm the bias – only the last comment acknowledges the problem:

“Foreign sounding names may be overlooked due to a perception that their English language skills may be insufficient on the job.”

“When you’re calling someone with an English-sounding name, you know what you’re getting into. You know you can call Bob Smith and can talk to him as quickly as you want to …”

“I personally am guilty of gravitating toward Anglo names on résumés, and I believe that it’s a very human condition – [a result of]resistance to change.”

“… It’s difficult to imagine hiring someone with a long first name, as it might be impractical in terms of answering the phone and saying it. People with easy-to-use shorter names are easier to hire and work with.”

“I’m down to about seven seconds to vet a résumé … I do realize how unfair the whole process is.”